Popped corn

One of the food items I stay away from is corn, but since I have eliminated so many items and was craving something crunchy I popped a kettle of corn and other than the oil it was popped in and a sprinkle of sea salt afterwards there was nothing else added to it.

I will continue to avoid corn products, with one exception...plain popcorn. A little nibble here and there and pop! It was and is a great snack.

I visited my GI Doctor and I am no longer on the acid reflux meds and have lost weight over the course of time that I have been eliminating foods and working at feeling the best I can feel and he was impressed with me...pop pop pop...I am impressed with the NEW ME too.

Free To Eat is now Some Foods Are Not My Friends

For those on the gluten free aggregator who knew my blog as FREE TO EAT it is now SOME FOODS ARE NOT MY FRIENDS.

Yes, I dumped free to eat in a manic moment but have no regrets at all. I am starting anew and like springtime it is a time to let the buds appear and let new life blossom...LOL...looking outside my window I laugh because I thought spring had sprung and instead MAMA NATURE played a cruel joke and dumped a bunch of snow on us...but that's okay, it is pretty and this too shall pass and so it is with life...we dump something and then we go on... Back in full swing and looking forward to everything! HUGS

Veggie sauce

I have recently been trying to perfect a veggie sauce to replace tomato-based sauces and this one is a keeper. I avoid anything with tomatoes as the acid bothers me, even on acid reflux meds, which I try not to have to take.

Boil the following for about ten min. in about 2-3 cups of water

2 carrots, cut up

1 celery stalk, cut up

onion, cut up.

Then add about 1/3-1/2 of a can of drained beets to the vegetables and the water they boiled in and blend in a blender until saucelike consistency. Add cooked ground beef, (about one patty-sized amount) if desired, basil, salt and pepper, oregano, garlic powder. The spice usage is totally your personal preference. I think the key is to have fun trying. That does not mean there will never be a flop. But now and then you produce something incredible and the joy, for me, comes in being creative.

I ladled mine over cooked spaghetti squash (I baked the squash in the oven) but you can also serve this sauce over any of the pastas you can tolerate. I prefer Tinkayada white rice spaghetti.

Well...happy day...I will be writing my fingers to the bone and loving every minute of it. I am at 30,000 words in the novel I am writing and can't wait to see what is on the next page...bye bye

Banana Pineapple Buckwheat Bread

I had two darkening bananas on my counter and went to Google to search for an egg-free banana bread recipe. I lucked out and found a sugar-free one as well. I adapted what I found, which was on a website that didn't seem to have a name to it, but was all about recipes, so thanks, and I sure am pleased with the results. It almost looks like brown bread, due to the dark color of buckwheat flour, and it is moist and flavorful like most banana breads.

Banana Pineapple Buckwheat Bread

Preheat oven to 350 deg.

Mix:

2 cups buckwheat flour (I used Bob's Redmill)

2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Baking Soda

2 tsp. Xanthan Gum

Set aside

Then process in a food processor the following:

2 bananas

1 cup of fresh pineapple (or crushed canned pineapple)

Add wet to dry and then add the following:

1 Tb. oil

1/4 cup rice milk

Mix well and bake in a greased loaf pan for about 40 min.

Let cool for about 5 min. and then carefully remove loaf from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack.

First time trying beans and rice for breakfast.

I love beans and rice. I simply make Minute Rice and add drained canned beans to it and I think it's the greatest. Well, this morning, since I don't do eggs and sometimes don't feel like having fruit, seldom buy gluten free cereals anymore, I was frustrated about what to have for breakfast...my eyes landed on the bowl of rice and the bowl of black beans in the fridge and I thought, "Why the heck not." I mixed and microwaved and I was in heaven...easy on the tummy and always a treat for my tastebuds.

I am ready to write another chapter...novelists need good eats...tapping away at the keyboard is exhausting.

How do you know when a food is not your friend?

How do you know when a food is not your friend?

This sounds childish, but some foods do not sit well in some people.

I have eliminated so many food items, but once in a while I slip back into using sugar...and I slip until I notice how out of control it always makes me feel...more more more... this past week with Easter candy buying I slipped. I got into Swedish fish and jelly beans and I was right back to my old ways of needing to rush out to get some every day because they were kind of like calling to me...I hated the way it made me feel and I knew I could not eat a couple, smile, and go about my bizness...NO...I have to keep eating it and eating it until they are gone and I feel like crapola.

SO...I had a bag of Swedish fish stashed and I took it and gave it to my dad when we met for lunch. I have been doing so well, I don't want to go backwards...so I face it all the time that some foods are not my friends... and sugar is def the enemy...

Finding out that I can't eat everything has been the best find of my life.

I used to eat everything in sight. I never worried about what I was putting into my mouth. When people fussed about eating I thought they were a bit uptight. Well, I may have put everything in my mouth but it came with a price. I had headaches, depression, itchy red blisters on my face, could not sit still, could not concentrate, spent my childhood constipated, bloated...well...you can see that eating everything and not thinking about the connection between what I ingested and what it was doing inside of me, resulted in poor quality of life.

When I was in my 20s I figured I might not tolerate milk so I slowed down on dairy. It seemed to help the constipation situation, but I still had the other problems and as the years passed, the problems seemed to get worse. It was not until my 50s that I finally saw the light...I had to have a large kidney stone lithotripsied and kept feeling terrible, so I put my symptoms in a google search on the Internet and that was the beginning of the end of feeling lousy all the time.

I started with eliminating gluten, seriously eliminating all dairy products and anything with casein, and over the past few years have added other eliminations to my list: soy, corn, yeast, potatoes, anything acidic, seeds, sulfite, eggs, sugar, and chocolate.

This has been an exhaustive lengthy process but one that has literally saved my life, sanity, and insides, I believe. It is a tough road, but a road worth traveling if you suffer with side effects to eating everything and anything... when you shouldn't. It is worth it for me...My choices are limited, but I don't mind because I feel great, for the most part, and feeling great is much better than feeling terrible.